


And Sugar-Dust

by luninosity



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Professors, Baking, Competition, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1751114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik and Charles sculpt cake for an interdepartmental university challenge, bicker over what technically counts as cheating, and seduce each other with buttercream frosting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Sugar-Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kageillusionz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageillusionz/gifts).



> Remember when I used to write baking-fluff for people's birthdays? I guess I still do that. :D
> 
> This happened because when I sent kage a birthday message of “eat all the cake” I accidentally forgot the second ‘t’, and clearly that was an excellent prompt for fic. Happy Birthday, darlin'!

“Hand me the wooden thing,” Charles says without looking up, “and you realize I can hear what you’re thinking, Erik, and not that wooden thing.”  
  
“You like that particular thing.” Erik hands over the requested bamboo cake-support anyway, while thinking remarkably filthy thoughts about Charles’s fingertips and buttercream with an impressively straight face. “How much longer is this going to take?”  
  
“You asked for my help, if you recall.” He regards the resultant structure—a three-foot high half-completed DNA spiral of chocolate-Kahlua cake and glittering spun sugar—with satisfaction. Then wonders whether, with more support on _that_ corner, they could achieve greater cake-related height. That’s the ultimate criterion, after all. “You wanted to win, you said. You turned up in my office with cake-carving tutorials on your tablet and quite a lot of anger at the physics department.”  
  
“They win every year,” Erik mutters, as if Charles needs the reminder, and adroitly tugs edible gold and silver decorations upward with a casual flick of long fingers. “They won the egg-drop challenge last year. It would be entirely unjust if they continue to conquer every ludicrous interdepartmental challenge. Can we redistribute the load-bearing supports, and make the center taller?”  
  
“Possibly. How do they feel about marshmallow rice layers? I know you said ninety percent edible, but it may collapse under its own weight if it’s purely cake.”  
  
“If the rules say nothing against it, I believe you’re allowed.” Erik starts looking up marshmallow-rice-square recipes on his sleek black tablet, focused and intrigued by the possibility of greater structural integrity; but one elegant finger ventures in the direction of Charles’s colored-sugar decorations, no doubt mostly to provoke a reaction and in part because Erik has a not-so-secret weakness for sweets after years of denial and for anything that Charles makes in particular.  
  
“And those rules are also fine with you recruiting aid from the genetics lab? Don’t touch that, it needs to dry.” He leans elbows against the counter, lazily. There’s flour in Erik’s hair and two half-consumed White Russians—more uses for the Kahlua—beside the cake and sunlight through the old enormous windows, huge shining sweeps of gold light and green grass and blue sky. They’re standing in Charles’s cavernous ancestral kitchen because it’s got more space than Erik’s chilly utilitarian city apartment, because Charles can never resist a challenge, and because Erik caving and requesting help is, in fact, irresistible.  
  
In the nearly three years they’ve been, well, _them,_ Charles has been able to count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Erik’s outright asked for assistance. Most often inquiries come in the form of statements; Charles has learned that _I’m giving a guest lecture on the potential applications of superconductors for magnetic levitation in trains_ properly means _please come to my guest lecture and watch me build something for the world, for you_ and that _I think you should let Hank do more of your grading, he IS your TA_ means _I miss seeing you during finals week_ and also _please take care of yourself,_ words which Erik says without voice, with every hand on Charles’s shoulder, every silently appearing cup of tea at his elbow.  
  
They’d met at one of the interminable faculty mixers, Erik a brand-new hire out of the engineering industry, tempted by the research facilities and promises of young minds to influence. Charles, two years into his own position, barely older than his graduate students and compensating with fluffy cardigans and his mother’s best careless-wealth attitude, had spotted attractively intelligent steel-blade eyes and lean height lurking awkwardly in a corner of the party, and had gone over, two martinis in hand, to try to make those eyes laugh.  
  
Five minutes into the conversation Erik’d nearly thrown the drink at him, the result of Charles accidentally answering an extremely loud thought about _baseline humans and their academic ideas of mutation_ plus Erik’s instinctive kneejerk distrust of telepaths and intrusions into his privacy.  
  
Twenty minutes after that, martinis gone, they’d been wrapped around each other in the coat-closet, intermittently debating the merits of the United Nations proposal for a mutant safe zone while simultaneously lighting sparks under each other’s skin, all passion and desire, spinning coin tricks and playful tugs at Charles’s expensive cufflinks and mutual fascination, emotion crackling in a feedback loop between them, vibrant and _alive_ in a way neither of them had ever, ever previously known.  
  
So, really: helping Erik defeat the physics department in this year’s ridiculous game is the least he can do. After all, every grin Erik throws his way, every hesitant lowering of mental iron walls to let Charles slip inside and curl up in familiar flame—  
  
Those make him smile, every day.  
  
Besides, this one’s kind of fun. He’d spent a fair amount of time in the mansion kitchens as a boy. It’d been a safe place, where neither his mother nor his stepfather would deign to go. Where bruises, emotional and otherwise, could be replaced by at worst simple physical burns from too-hot very present ovens. He’d always liked learning new recipes. Disparate ingredients combining to form new flavors, new possibilities. To make the world sweeter, wistfully, hopelessly, for a moment in time.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, soft and swift, and the question’s curling at the forefront of his mind like smoke, visible and bittersweet.  
  
Charles mentally shakes himself. Present-day. His Erik, fierceness and scars and skepticism, gazing at him with love across a frosting-swirled tower. “Was I projecting? Sorry. I think if we make the real one, for the proper competition day, we should just use extra-dense pound cake; I only wanted to use chocolate today because I do like Kahlua.” _I’m fine. I’m enjoying myself. You have sugar on your fingers. I told you not to touch that._  
  
 _I love you, Charles._ Erik contemplates the sugar, then looks at Charles’s face, then very deliberately brings them to his mouth. Licks. Slowly. Quite thorough.  
  
“Well,” Charles manages, suddenly warm all over, and not from the oven-heat, “that’s hardly fair.”  
  
“You weren’t projecting,” Erik says, “I could see it on your face. Thinking. I thought you’d enjoy the distraction.”  
  
“Did you mean the cake-sculpture, or your fingers?” He runs a fingertip idly along the inside of a mixing bowl. If Erik wants to play, oh, they can play. Buttercream dances like smooth white silk across his tongue, when he puts the finger in his mouth and sucks _. By the way, I think we should ask Tony for assistance. He ought to have some sort of laser-assisted pastry-leveling device we can borrow, and if not he’ll invent one._  
  
Erik’s expression’s a perfect mix of arousal, exasperation, and conflicted desire. “No bringing up Stark while you’re doing…that…and outside assistance counts as cheating…and _why_ are you on the other side of the countertops?”  
  
“He did send me an email the other day asking plaintively whether even more expensive scotch could convince me to leave academia for, and I quote, the glorious embrace of Stark Industries. You are aware that asking _me_ for help qualifies as cheating, technically, under those conditions.” He picks up, not his drink, but Erik’s. Finishes it off in one long swallow. Feels Erik’s eyes tracking the motion of his throat. _Not that I’m complaining._  
  
Erik’s eyes get darker. Storms behind the steel. Unvoiced grumbles about Stark flirting with other people’s partners and possible dismemberment and what electromagnetism can do to an arc reactor given ten minutes alone. “Come here.”  
  
“You could ask, once in a while,” Charles suggests, not moving, lazily unbuttoning the first two buttons of his shirt, sleeves rolled up, hip propped against the cupboards. “Try it. Please, Charles, come closer. Please, Charles, may I kiss you. May I remove your clothing. That sort of thing.”  
  
Erik now looks and feels startled, albeit even more turned on. “But I do. Ask.”  
  
“You rather don’t, but I don’t mind.” One more button. Erik’s gaze drops to revealed skin like iron to a magnet. “I take it everyone assumes you’ll ask me for assistance anyway. Fortunately most of them aren’t aware that I have formidable pastry-related talents. And I’m too busy to play on my own behalf; that grant application’s due next week, and I have to call someone to fix the roof of the west wing, those ancient shingles won’t hold up to the next storm…”  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, and actually comes over, eyes serious in a way that only Charles gets to see, and even then only rarely, in stolen moments. It’s not the sharply flaring intensity of that engineer’s mind at work, and it’s not sardonic dark humor at the foibles of a disappointingly fallible world, and it’s not even the soft astonished happiness they sometimes hold, lying naked and worn-out and flushed with fading euphoric joy, one hand tangled in Charles’s hair.  
  
It’s something different. Grave and sweetly intent and loyal beyond any measurable terms.  
  
Erik touches a finger to his lips. Charles stops talking, surprised. Erik smirks. “Perfection.”  
  
“Seriously,” Charles says, behind the finger, _I was only teasing, love. Though I did mean it about borrowing the laser._  
  
“I love you,” Erik says. “I know I’m not—not easy to be with. To be fair, you’re incredibly stubborn.” _I want to be here when you talk to Stark._  
  
 _You want to scowl at Tony with your best I-can-kill-you-with-a-paperclip glare, you mean._ He kisses the finger over his lips. He wants to. “Thank you for that.”  
  
“Charles,” Erik says again. “I didn’t mean—never mind. I do try to ask. If it’s important. About your roof.” _I would like to ask_ —very clear, each word selected and shaped and pushed forward for the easiest possible telepathic reading— _whether I can help with your roof. I can try to fix it._  
  
This offer comes with a host of other images, memories, complicated knots of precious glinting thread. Erik fixing appliances, windows, broken bits of the house he’d shared with his mother. Erik rebuilding pieces of their home, even as his mother grew sicker, as winter poured icily in, as Erik’s junior-engineer salary at Sebastian Shaw’s industrial company wasn’t enough, as Shaw informed him that he and his so-useful abilities couldn’t take more time off for hospital visits, as Erik repaired the television set for the fifth time so his Mama would have some distraction during the day…  
  
Erik’s always tried to fix the world. To take all the pain and turn it into _change_.  
  
And Erik’s offering to help fix his roof. To repair his home.  
  
“Oh,” Charles says. Oh. And he thinks, a voiceless wordless pulse of affirmation and affection and leaping sun-bright clarity, _yes._  
  
Erik grins, that wide ferocious delight Charles loves so very very profoundly. “Yes.”  
  
Charles thinks about his response for only a few seconds, then sticks his finger in the mixing bowl again, finds buttercream, holds it to Erik’s lips. Erik obediently licks it up, thoughts spinning in incredibly depraved directions, about fifty ideas at once.  
  
Charles laughs. And then helpfully goes back to the cream. His own lips, this time. Erik makes a sound that can best be described as a lustful growl and pounces, following sugary sweetness.  
  
Charles’s mouth. That open shirt collar. Shortly thereafter, Charles’s bare stomach, and lower, and then they stop bothering with the frosting, because Erik already knows all the places Charles loves to be tasted.  
  
They end up in a sticky sated tangle on the kitchen floor, Charles’s apron serving as an inadequate and slightly floury barricade against cold tile. There’s chocolate on Erik’s hip. There’s cream that is _not_ buttercream on Charles’s nose. Bits of broken colored sugar lie scattered around, relics of a crash into the kitchen island; the DNA-shaped decorations haven’t survived unscathed. Charles licks his lips and tastes delicious fanciful indulgence and Erik, and smiles.  
  
“One more thing.” Erik’s running a hand over his back, thoughts a disparate cloud of fulfilled need and appreciative pleasure and thrumming nerves and ever-present awe, just a hint, at the complex and intricate beauty that he thinks of when his mind shapes _Charles_. Charles has stopped verbally protesting this image of himself, but mentally rolls his eyes. _What thing?_  
  
 _Too tired to talk, are you?_ That reply’s tinged with proprietary pride and more than a hint of smugness. Charles smacks him weakly on the closest hip. It’s the one with the chocolate handprint. This leads to a few interested and interesting thoughts, but maybe in five minutes. Once he can move.  
  
“Only five? Hmm.” _I thought I was the one who could control iron._  
  
Charles makes a vaguely rude gesture that direction, sprawled happily over Erik’s chest. Erik runs warm, and feels splendid under and around bare skin. _You can assist in that regard, then. Weren’t you asking me something?_  
  
 _Yes. I was. I am._ “About your roof…” Erik pauses, though it’s not uncertainty. Erik’s hardly ever uncertain, and won’t admit it when he is. He’s only looking for words. “You hate my apartment. You think it’s cold. It _is_ cold. For you.”  
  
Charles, who can hear those thoughts before they even attempt to become the words, says, “Are you sure, oh no, never mind, of course you’re sure, you wouldn’t ask if you weren’t—” and then says _oh_ _God yes, yes, please move in with me, yes!!_  
  
Erik puts both hands in his hair, kisses him again, brilliant and swift, thinking of challenges and success, ridiculous and triumphant and together. Murmurs, “you taste like sugar _,_ Charles,” and thinks, _like coming home._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [art inspired by And Sugar-dust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3781312) by [Mikanskey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikanskey/pseuds/Mikanskey)




End file.
